a similar issue comes up for laptops with docking stations -- you may
want to install some of the packages on the big drive in the dock,
even though you don't need it when running portable (laptop disks are
still pretty bounded in size -- whereas you can get a 5.1G IDE for the
docking station for $450... or maybe less by now.)
The kludge approach for packages with big components (like
directories in /usr/lib) is to move those entire directories off and
symlink them. I think dpkg even does the right thing in this case but
I'm not 100% sure, it may just end up pulling it local again.
However, that's not good enough for packages where the main files are
big too.
As far as storage goes, being able to say "install this package, but
redirect anything under /usr to /bigdisk/... and symlink them from
where they want to be" handles this pretty well, I think; avoids
touching /etc and /var at all, too...
The trick is teaching dpkg about it and having it "clean them up"
later... even if it only cleaned up the files on /bigdisk and left the
directory structure, that's fine, though it can probably do better...
I think this would be enough for the NFS case as well, if there were
some flag to say "only install the symlinks for this package, find the
files on /nfsdisk" or something like that. As long as you make
updates "simultaneous" across machines, that would be enough; in
practice, perhaps more is needed -- comments? Should I try
implementing the above approach anyway?